The Weingarten Speech and our unions’ interests in quality teachers.

Monty Neill, Deputy Director, Fair Test from the National Journal Online:

Randi Weingarten’s speech and the AFT model correctly point out that the main purpose of teacher evaluation should be formative, to support and guide professional learning. To a degree, by establishing what it will take to do evaluation well and rejecting the near-witch hunt of “bad” teachers, they challenge the dominant accountability rhetoric to live up to its claim of wanting to improve schools.

However, there are at least two significant, interrelated dangers that could cripple the positive aspects of the proposal.

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